Y'know I think this will need to be engraved on the tombs of most western leaders and "serious people" who've been involved in practically every decision of the last 100 years.

I was watching Simon Scharma's new series on "American futures" and he was talking about the water crisis in the west and the Oklahoma dust bowl. In each of these genuine experts desperately tried to get access to policy makers and explain why what they were doing was wrong. They weren't serious people y'see. Cos serious people have access, they flatter, they tell politicians what they want to hear, they go with hte flow, never bring awkward facts into discussions. They don't contradict, ie they're rude and abrasive.

The bloke who predicted the dust bowl was actually granted a hearing the day the winds actually produced a dust cloud over Washington. He was able to say "this cloud is the topsoil of Oklahoma, it is what I have been warning you about for years" Of course, it was too late by then.

I was reminded in this programme of the people who said how Iraq would go swimmingly, or would turn the corner is 6 months, rose petals. And how anybody who contradicted was frozen out. Nobody would hear them. They were pronounced "not serious". And we hear politicians now going "nobody could have predicted..." and you can't help throwing things at the screen even now shouting "yes, they did, you wouldn't listen to them..."

And now the smartest guys in the room are saying "nobody could have predicted" this financial crisis. And I reach for a bottle of beer and drink deep cos I can no longer bear to listen to this self-serving drivel of self-reinforcing blame avoidance. They didn't know, cos they didn't want to know. They didn't hear cos they never listened.

Because oily lobbyists flatter them with easy promises, surround them, protect them from words that are impolite, from ideas that might challenge.

keep to the Fen Causeway